Preparedness of countries to face covid-19 pandemic crisis: Strategic positioning and underlying structural factors to support strategies of prevention of pandemic threats

Abstract

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to generate a constant pandemic threat with new mutations of the viral agent that create socioeconomic issues. One of the fundamental problems is the evaluation of the preparedness of countries to cope with COVID-19 pandemic crisis to detect factors associated with the reduction of infectious disease and rollout of vaccinations in society. The study here confronts this problem by developing two basic indexes, which measure the performance to face pandemic threats by countries. In particular, the Index r (as resilience) detects which countries have had the best performance to reduce the negative impact of mortality related to COVID-19 pandemic and the Index p (as preparedness and prevention) assesses best-performer countries to support COVID-19 vaccinations to constrain future pandemic threats and support the recovery of socioeconomic systems. Index of resilience is a composite measure based on three indicators, given by average mortality, hospital occupancy and Intensive Care Units occupancy per 100 000 people, producing an overall score; Index of prevention is also a composite measure of two indicators related COVID-19 vaccinations (doses of vaccines administrated and total vaccinates per 100 000 people), producing an overall score. The application of these indexes on a case study of European countries, having a homogenous socioeconomic area, shows strategic positioning of countries to cope with a major pandemic threat. Findings reveal that all countries have some weaknesses and no country has a high preparedness to cope with a major epidemic or pandemic. Moreover, results suggest that best-performer countries to cope with COVID-19 pandemic crisis have a smaller size of population and better public governance, associated with high expenditures in health system. These indexes can help policymakers for designing strategies to improve preparedness to face future pandemic threats.